Local small business owners don't often get the chance to meet face to face with government agencies and private entities looking to buy services, but Wednesday's Bexar County Contracting Conference gave them that chance.

The meeting, aimed especially at minority, women and military-veteran business owners, drew about 2,000 participants at the Freeman Coliseum Exposition Hall.

In the early 1970s, Cisneros said, San Antonio didn't understand the importance of economic development.

Today, because of the strong regional economy and economic-development efforts, small business owners have a chance to land contracts in a wide range of fields that include the biosciences, tourism, manufacturing, aerospace, construction, public works, and serving oil-and-gas companies developing the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas.

“This is not your grandfather's San Antonio or Bexar County any more,” Cisneros said.

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“We're trying to break into the federal marketplace, and this is a great opportunity to do that,” said Boerne resident Steve Denney of Castle Peak Technologies, an IT company based in Keller near Fort Worth. Denney talked to Pat Barber, a small business specialist at the Air Force Air Education Training Command.

The conference was designed to help small businesses grow. For larger companies, it offered a chance to find subcontractors, said conference organizer Renée Watson, manager of Bexar County's small, minority and women-owned business enterprise program.

Conference exhibitors ran the gamut, from regional blue-chip companies such as H-E-B and Zachry Corp. to international firms such as The Boeing Co., and construction giant Skanska Group of Sweden.

Texas universities also were heavily represented, as were local banks and credit unions.

The services in demand likewise were wide-ranging. Zachry provided a list of 44 needs for subcontractors or suppliers, ranging from fuel to modular trailers, guardrails and structural steel.

Skanska, in its handout, suggested that potential subcontractors fill out a pre-qualification application online to “put your company ‘on the radar.'”

VIA Metropolitan Transit said it was searching for providers of aluminum wheels, diesel fuel and employee uniforms. “I especially hope we can find a local company for the uniforms,” said Dianne Mendoza, VIA's director of equal employment and business opportunity.

Bev Hurston, president of Fusion Point Inc., said she would continue to seek a federal contract after one she was awarded in late summer went away.

Her administrative services and IT company was to supply a single person at a photo lab at Fort Sam Houston, but “the very day we were to start, it didn't happen,” she said.

“We have never done business at Fort Sam, so it would've been a foot in the door,” Hurston added. “We'll just have to keep pursuing these kinds of contracts.”

At the Frost Bank booth, vice president of corporate banking Kate Crosby said small companies shouldn't think they don't have a chance to land a deal.

“We really try to keep the door open” to doing business with smaller companies, such as a maintenance firm, Crosby said. “We'll do a one-year contract and see how they perform.”